The Bracken Woods don't look at me

he'd not forgotten what zamael told him -- part of him has wondered if runion is the same as the stranger who attacked alarian before, sent him injured to tindómë. he hasn't brought it up, but the thought lingers.

maybe that's why he's sensitive to where alarian is today. the children are tended to (he slinks around queenie, avoidant, useless). the governor, however, is not in his den, and for the love of all that is holy, he really should not be out and about with that head wound of his. not yet. delight hasn't left bracken's borders since his arrival but today he plunges past them, trailing alarian's scent towards the woods. when the acrid tang of blood interrupts the path he's following, all of delight's worst fears slam back into him.

he runs.

it's not a long path to the aftermath. "alarian," he chokes out, frozen before the scene. delight has witnessed death before, but perhaps fate has been kind to spare him the gore of it: his traumas have been cold, bound in ice and illness. never in violence. never like this. for a moment he can't tell if the dead body is alarian's or someone else's (runion, the clever part of his mind supplies dully, an educated guess borne of running that name over his teeth over and over again). he forces himself to look away from the debased body, to take steps towards alarian until he can fall nearly on top of him, the ringing in his ears slowly overwhelmed by alarian's crying. "what," he says, and nothing else, too -- anything to be anything of use except to try and hold onto him, oblivious to the plant inches away and it's significance. zamael, eris, they need -- someone competant -- he needs to call -- he can't yet -- he does, the howl ripping out of him in a daze, too-close to alarian, probably, but -- fuck. alarian.